Hey Plever

[TGJB]

That was pretty funny, although I\'m wondering how you heard about my post, since I seem to remember you saying you didn\'t read this board any more.

[SP]

Obviously I was not trying to be stealthy – I have perused here on some recent occasions, and did so to see what was drawing the previously isolationist CC into the fray.  I gotta say, even though I'm now reading a very small sample, I don't see objectionable things in your recent posts.  Just jousting over variant theory and quality control -- no name-calling, no lawyers, no sins from 18 years ago left on base.

In fact, the air of jihad is refreshingly absent here and your own product is more front and center.  By the way, I think some of the extras in your product (I also peeked at the sample put up by TGAB today) are good innovations that I would use in my handicapping, if only they weren't based on figures I totally don't trust.
 
Anyway, the reason I'm posting is that I appreciate that you took my Rag-board post in good humor, but I nonetheless want to apologize.  Given the history of bad blood, I should have let pass the opportunity for humor at your expense.  I'm glad that reading posts here no longer is a risk to my blood pressure, but I won't be here often.  At this point, I log onto the Rag site more out of habit than anything else – I don't get to handicap enough (maybe 15 races so far this year, sigh) to feel so much connection.  Maybe when I quit teaching and the kids get older...

I am much more of a passionate and involved foodie than horseplayer at this point.  And on the all-important pink fowl issue, I am solidly with you.  I eat all the sashimi I can afford and enjoy my meat quite juicy.  But half-raw duck?  Yuck.  Was the poor drake to be served as by overpriced "food stylists" on this side of the Atlantic -- with a mango-wasabe-goat-cheese-pesto flan surrounded by artfully arranged lavender petals and shavings of clove cigarette butts? Give me a fully-roasted duck from a Chinatown window, hacked with a cleaver and eaten out of the to-go package with no other embellishment than Chinese spiced salt any old day.  Just don't do this over your keyboard or your variants will slide right off the chart.

[TGJB]

It was called \"Barbary Duck\", one part was deep fried, and the other part (breast) was a row of slices. If I had let them cook it the way they wanted it would have been flat out disgusting.

As long as you are here, I\'ve been meaning to ask you a question. As I recall, you have been involved in what amounts to some PR work, with political causes and/or companies. Have you ever seen a situation where it would be considered dirty pool to hold up to public scrutiny one\'s competition\'s policies, products, and public utterances? I have never had a problem with the Ragozin operation doing so with mine-- just with the personal attacks.

[SP]

Nice try on the rhetorical question approach.  The issue -- in general and in this particular dispute -- always was and will be the manner in which people \"hold up to public scrutiny one\'s competition\'s policies, products and public utterances.\"  Is it done with accuracy, fairness, and a frequency and intensity suitable to the alleged grievances?  Is it done with professional integrity or out of personal malice?

Everyone in this dispute has problems with everyone else\'s personal attacks.  Claiming the other party to have cast the first stone has proven as productive here as it has in acheiving justice and peace in the Mid East.

You just wrote a post entitled something like \"I know I shouldn\'t...\"  You were right.  If you truly want a decrease or even ultimately an end to personal attacks, stop making them even in response.  You can defend your reputation more effectively in other ways -- ways that don\'t reinforce the negative things being posted about you.

On the other hand, if you want the insult war to heat up again either for personal reasons or because you think the increased attention level will boost sales, hey, you have the right and ability to do so, but don\'t expect too many people to buy into the victim schtick.  And don\'t expect me to come each time you call \"hey.\"

[TGJB]

The question was not rhetorical. It has been posited several times recently that any commenting on Ragozin figures or methodologies is foul play, and therefore not deserving of a response. I\'m assuming by your recent posts that you disagree. And in case you didn\'t notice, I let the implications in your earlier post go by, and I\'m letting the recent ones as well. Despite disagreeing with them very strongly.

[SP]

In my first post, I had written: \"I don't see objectionable things in your recent posts. Just jousting over variant theory and quality control,\" so I was already on record agreeing that criticizing your competition\'s methodology & practice is not in and of itself foul play, and that you had not in recent posts done so in an objectionable way.

As for letting some things go, there\'s no other way to have civil dialogue with folks one disagrees with and dislikes.  I\'m letting things go too and it isn\'t easy for me either, but it beats the alternative.  This is a good place to let go of this exchange altogether.

[TGJB]

Saw your post on the Rag board, and you know what? Shame on me. Guys like you don\'t change, and I should never have acceded to your request to be let back on here.

As the old fable goes, it\'s your nature.

Oh well, no harm done.

[SP]

My request to be let back on???  You invited me here with a good-natured quasi-friendly post entitled \"Hey Plever.\"  And when I tried to post, I had no problem at all -- my old bb account from a few years ago was still there and valid.  No request was needed, and this time around, I would not have made one.  

However, since I was trying to avoid the old hostility and offer an apology, I did e-mail your office seeking a new user name (SP) instead of the provocative one I had used on that one post a few years ago (\"The one you love to hate\"). I was glad Paul was willing to make that change. But it seems that the old user name is still pretty accurate, eh?

I\'ll let readers decide whether it was appropriate for you, after my first post on this string, to start trying to use me to provide ammunition against the Raggies, and whether casting you as Lucy was unfair -- damning evidence of whatever \"my nature\" is.  If I had it to do over again, my response to your question would have been \"Go hire your own consultant -- I smell it coming, I\'m outtahere.\"  And now I am.

[TGJB]

The context, as you well know, was that I had posted about my vacation, and posts attacking me had sprung up like crabgrass on the Rag site-- including yours, which I had complimented you on, making it clear no apology was necessary. And then, in the FIRST PARAGRAPH of your \"apology\" post here, you insinuated previous bad behavior (\"name calling\", \"lawyers\"), as if I had behaved badly but now reformed, and as if it were necessary to bring up the past.

Now, I let that go. But aside from the fact that was the first (recent) shot, there is this-- while you may not have been reading this board, you evidently have been reading and posting on the other one, so you know that while I have not posted there, there have been literally hundreds of posts attacking me in EXACTLY the way you claim to decry. As you said, I have been talking variant theory and quality control here, while the other board is filled with personal attacks.

So, IN THAT CONTEXT, I asked you a question that, if you had not been partisan, you could have answered with \"of course there is nothing wrong with holding one\'s competition up to scrutiny, but there is something wrong with personal attacks\". But you would never have done that, would you, even though you agree with it. You are an advocate/partisan pretending to be above the fray.

 I\'ll let everyone figure out for themselves which one of us moved the ball. As for getting back on the board, you may be right on the details for all I know, but Paul told me you requested to be set up to post, and I said go ahead.